Digital Product Development and Support Services

Descriptions

Oak National Academy is establishing a dynamic market in accordance with section 34 of the Procurement Act 2023 and Regulation 16 of the Procurement Regulations 2024. The market will provide a compliant and flexible route for the award of contracts related to the engineering and product support, and ongoing development of the authority's national digital education platform and related tools.

The dynamic market will allow for rolling supplier entry, publication of contract opportunities, and awards made via most advantageous tender (MAT) principles in accordance with sections 19 and 23 of the Act.

This Dynamic Market will be structured into lots. Suppliers may apply for membership of one or more lots at any time during the market's term, subject to the relevant membership conditions.

At the date of this notice, the market will be open for applications for the following lot:

Lot 1 Web Development Services

Scope: This lot covers the provision of specialist web development services to support the design, delivery, enhancement, and ongoing operation of Oak National Academy's digital education platform and associated tools. Suppliers appointed to this lot may be required to work on any part of Oak's core digital estate, including the main platform (www.thenational.academy), content creation tooling, and platform services. The scope includes:

Full-stack development of Oak's web platform, with an emphasis on scalable, modular design patterns that enable rapid iteration of features

Maintenance and enhancement of existing codebases underpinning existing live services

Development of user interfaces that are responsive, inclusive, and accessible in line with current UK accessibility legislation and best practice, ensuring usability for all users, including those relying on assistive technologies

Continuous improvement of performance, page load times, and reliability across high-traffic user journeys

Secure engineering practices that uphold user privacy, data protection, and application resilience, in line with relevant public sector security guidance

Collaborative delivery within agile multidisciplinary teams, including pairing with in-house developers, product managers, researchers, and content leads

Deployment and testing within a continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) pipeline, using modern automation tools and cloud infrastructure

Contribution to code documentation and handover processes, especially where features are intended for long-term use by Oak's in-house teams or other suppliers

Individual contracts awarded under this lot may range from targeted feature builds to broader support and maintenance roles over a defined period. Suppliers may be required to collaborate with other digital delivery partners under Oak's delivery model.

Additional lots are expected to be added to this Dynamic Market over its lifetime to cover further requirements in Digital Product Development and Support Services. These will be introduced by modification of the Dynamic Market and publication of a notice under section 39(4) of the Procurement Act 2023. Suppliers may apply for membership of any future lots when they are established.